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Janice Miller-Young Jennifer Boman E d i t o r s

Using the decoding the disciplines Framework for Learning Across the disciplines

Using theDecodingThe DisciplinesFramework forLearning Acrossthe Disciplines

Janice Miller-YoungJennifer Boman

Editors

New Directions forTeaching and Learning

Catherine M. WehlburgEditor-in-Chief

Number 150 • Summer 2017Jossey-BassSan Francisco

Using the Decoding The Disciplines Framework for Learning Across the DisciplinesJanice Miller-Young, Jennifer Boman (eds.)New Directions for Teaching and Learning, no. 150Editor-in-Chief: Catherine M. Wehlburg

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FROM THE SERIES EDITOR

About This Publication

Since 1980, New Directions for Teaching and Learning (NDTL) has broughta unique blend of theory, research, and practice to leaders in postsecondaryeducation. NDTL sourcebooks strive not only for solid substance but alsofor timeliness, compactness, and accessibility.

The series has four goals: to inform readers about current and future di-rections in teaching and learning in postsecondary education, to illuminatethe context that shapes these new directions, to illustrate these new direc-tions through examples from real settings, and to propose ways in whichthese new directions can be incorporated into still other settings.

This publication reflects the view that teaching deserves respect as ahigh form of scholarship. We believe that significant scholarship is con-ducted not only by researchers who report results of empirical investigationsbut also by practitioners who share disciplinary reflections about teaching.Contributors to NDTL approach questions of teaching and learning as seri-ously as they approach substantive questions in their own disciplines, andthey deal not only with pedagogical issues but also with the intellectual andsocial context in which these issues arise. Authors deal on the one hand withtheory and research and on the other with practice, and they translate fromresearch and theory to practice and back again.

About This Volume

This volume provides examples and evidence of the various ways in whichthe Decoding the Disciplines framework has been applied across disciplinesand used to inform teaching, curriculum, and pedagogical research initia-tives at Mount Royal University. Chapters outline how various communitiesof practice got started, describe the analyses of three different collections ofDecoding interviews, extend the Decoding framework using different theo-retical lenses, and connect the learning to practical applications for teachersand teacher–scholars in higher education. The chapters provide detailed in-formation so that readers from diverse backgrounds may develop effectivemodels of practice for their own context and purposes.

Catherine WehlburgEditor-in-Chief

CATHERINE M. WEHLBURG is the associate provost for institutional effectivenessat Texas Christian University.

CONTENTS

EDITORS’ NOTES 7Janice Miller-Young, Jennifer Boman Editors

FOREWORD 9David Pace, Joan Middendorf

Section One: Introduction to Decoding Acrossthe Disciplines1. Overview of Decoding across the Disciplines 13Jennifer Boman, Genevieve Currie, Ron MacDonald, Janice Miller-Young,Michelle Yeo, Stephanie ZettelThis chapter describes how Decoding the Disciplines work started asa faculty development initiative at Mount Royal University and howit developed into various teaching, curriculum, and research projectswhich are presented in this issue.

2. Uncovering Ways of Thinking, Practicing, and Beingthrough Decoding across Disciplines

19

Janice Miller-Young, Jennifer BomanCommon themes from Decoding interviews of seven diverse bottle-necks are described, with implications for both teaching and research.

Section Two: Theoretical Lenses3. Conscious Connections: Phenomenology and Decodingthe Disciplines

37

Genevieve CurrieDecoding interviews from seven diverse bottlenecks were analyzedfrom a phenomenological perspective, followed by a discussion of em-bodied knowing and implications for educators.

4. Decoding the Disciplines as a Hermeneutic Practice 49Michelle YeoThis chapter argues that expert practice is an inquiry which surfaces ahermeneutic relationship between theory, practice, and the ’normal’ ofthe body, with implications for new lines of questioning in the Decod-ing interview.

5. Intuitions and Instincts: Considerations for DecodingDisciplinary Identities

63

Ron MacDonaldUsing identity theory, this chapter shows how deciphering teachers’paths to their disciplinary professional identities could make impor-tant elements of their tacit knowledge explicit and available to theirstudents.

Section Three: Decoding in Communities of Practice6. Building Bridges from the Decoding Interview to TeachingPractice

75

Jennifer Pettit, Melanie Rathburn, Victoria Calvert, Roberta Lexier,Margot Underwood, Judy Gleeson, Yasmin DeanThese service-learning practitioners describe how using Decoding in amultidisciplinary collaborative self-study influenced their practice withboth students and community partners.

7. Impact of Decoding Work within a Professional Program 87Michelle Yeo, Mark Lafave, Khatija Westbrook, Jenelle McAllister,Dennis Valdez, Breda EubankThis chapter describes how the Decoding process was used in a cur-riculum transformation process when changing to a competency-basedmodel in Athletic Therapy.

Section Four: Synthesis8. Learning from Decoding across Disciplines and withinCommunities of Practice

97

Janice Miller-Young, Jennifer BomanThe authors synthesize what has been learned from the theoretical andpractical applications presented in this issue and make recommenda-tions for future work.

INDEX 103

EDITORS’ NOTES

This special issue demonstrates how Decoding the Disciplines not onlyprovides a framework for inquiry into teaching and learning disciplinaryconcepts but also holds much potential for bridging disciplinary thinkingand teaching practice across disciplines and serving as a tool for both teach-ing and curriculum development. In Chapter 1, together with our FacultyLearning Community (FLC) coauthors, we describe the Decoding the Dis-ciplines FLC at Mount Royal University, including how it started as a facultydevelopment initiative and how it developed into various teaching, curricu-lum, and research projects that are presented in detail in subsequent chap-ters. We hope that others will use and extend this work to inform waysof thinking, practicing, and being for both teaching and learning in highereducation.

Acknowledgment

The Academic Development Centre and the Institute for Scholarship ofTeaching and Learning’s TransCanada Collaborative Research Program,both at Mount Royal University, provided financial support for this work.

Janice Miller-YoungJennifer Boman

Editors

JANICE MILLER-YOUNG was the director of the Institute for Scholarship of Teach-ing and Learning at Mount Royal University from 2013 to 2016. In this capacity,her work concentrated on developing and facilitating scholarship of teachingand learning initiatives across disciplines.

JENNIFER BOMAN is an associate professor and faculty development consultantin the Academic Development Centre at Mount Royal University. She has fa-cilitated the Decoding the Disciplines Faculty Learning Community at MountRoyal. As a faculty development consultant, much of her work centers on sup-porting faculty in their teaching.

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING, no. 150, Summer 2017 © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/tl.20242 7

FOREWORD

You work on something for a long time and put it out for others to con-sider. You inevitably wonder: Will others grasp what you are trying to do?Will basic misunderstandings emerge that undermine the outcomes you areseeking, even when people believe that they are building on your work?

All of these concerns were on our minds when we began to publicallypresent Decoding the Disciplines more than a decade ago. And that is whyreading this volume has been such a joy. The truly impressive scholars ofteaching and learning at Mount Royal University really got what we hadbeen struggling to share. They got it and took this work in new directionsthat we had not explored.

Decoding the Disciplines emerged from the Indiana University Fresh-man Learning Project (FLP), a program designed to help instructors in-crease learning in their courses. Neither a method of instruction per se noran abstract exploration of the nature of a discipline, Decoding provides aframework for identifying and remedying those elements of a course thatare most problematic for students. From the FLP there emerged a seven-step process in which instructors identify a bottleneck to learning, makeexplicit the mental operations required to overcome the obstacle, modelthe required steps for students, give them practice at these skills, deal withany emotional bottlenecks that interfere with learning, assess the successof their efforts, and share the results. What began as a program focused onlearning issues on a particular campus was transformed into a vehicle forthe scholarship of teaching and learning with the publication of Decodingthe Disciplines in an earlier issue of New Directions for Teaching and Learningand with the creation of the History Learning Project with Arlene Dı́az andLeah Shopkow.

Decoding is now being explored by teams in at least ten countries, butnone of these have done more to realize its potential than the instructorsand educational developers who created this volume. In the early develop-ment of the Decoding paradigm we concentrated, of necessity, on relativelyconcrete and practical issues. Leah Shopkow added a greater theoretical

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING, no. 150, Summer 2017 © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) • DOI: 10.1002/tl.20243 9

10 USING THE DECODING FRAMEWORK FOR LEARNING ACROSS DISCIPLINES

dimension to this work with her explorations of the ways in which studentmisunderstandings of the epistemological orientations of particular disci-plines could block learning. But we have not had the opportunity to fullyexplore the theoretical foundations of this work. Focusing on the secondstep in the process—making explicit the mental operations students mustmaster—the group at Mount Royal has built on previous work and takenthe model in entirely new directions. Their systematic, qualitative analysisof the Decoding interviews is a model for future work in this field, as istheir application of phenomenology, hermeneutics, and identity theory toDecoding.

Second, they have made great contributions to our understanding ofthe mental operations that transcend disciplinary boundaries. In develop-ing Decoding, we avoided too much discussion of shared patterns acrossfields, because of the danger that instructors would lose focus on the par-ticular mental operations required in their courses in search for vague andgeneric patterns of critical thinking. But there are commonalities across dis-ciplines that need to be explored systematically. This volume does just that,providing a model for the analysis of similar patterns of operating that mustbe mastered in multiple fields.

Next the Mount Royal group has focused on areas that had previouslyreceived less attention in Decoding—professional education and curricu-lum. They have realized that in these areas students need to master not onlyacademic knowledge but also the patterns of actions and reactions that oc-cur in a professional setting. They transformed their curriculum by usingDecoding to unpack professional intuition and disrupt non-evidence-basedpractices. Their efforts open up valuable areas for future work.

Finally, the work of this team provides a marvelous example of the col-laborative nature of Decoding. From its beginning the paradigm has builtupon interaction of faculty across disciplines, because encountering the ba-sic operations in other fields is a crucial element in recognizing those inone’s own. Using Decoding the Disciplines as the guiding process in FacultyLearning Communities motivates instructors to dig deeply into the natureof their disciplines and to find creative ways to share it with their students.That power is visible in every page of this volume. Whether they are ex-ploring the dimensions of professional education or considering how bestto help students build a bridge in Honduras, the authors are using to greatadvantage the emotional energy and insights generated by being part of ateam. Thus, although this volume concentrates on the second step of De-coding, it is also a marvelous example of the seventh step—sharing.

This book is a wonderful place to begin an exploration of the rapidlyexpanding Decoding paradigm. The reader can move from here to discus-sions of the other steps of the process and to alternatives to the interviewprocess through the works mentioned in the notes or in our recent books(David Pace, The Decoding the Disciplines Paradigm: Seven Steps to IncreasedStudent Learning, Indiana University Press, and Joan Middendorf and Leah

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING • DOI: 10.1002/tl